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He clenched and unclenched his fists, working out the nervous energy that made him feel like he was moving both too fast and too slow. He rounded a corner in the maze of underground tunnels and collided with Kat. She stumbled, falling out of one of her heels, and he caught her forearms, steadying her.
“Is he—” she began.
“Getting ready,” he said.
She eyed him for a moment, the wheels visibly turning behind her eyes, then she grabbed his sleeve and tugged him into one of the storage rooms. As soon as the door closed behind them, she asked, “Where was he?”
He forced a breath through his nostrils. “Don’t know. My brother hasn’t exactly been confiding in me lately, you know?”
She grimaced. “Right. Sorry.”
“Does it matter?”
“It might.” She sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe not. I just don’t want anything else to go wrong.”
He wrapped his arms around her, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “It didn’t go well with Derek?”
“As well as can be expected. But there are no more chances. This is it. The online chatter has died down, thankfully, but Derek made it very clear we dodged a bullet and that is the only reason I haven’t been fired already. And if he finds out our relationship is less pretend than we led him to believe—”
“Thought I told you, Luna. There’s nothing pretend about this.”
The door of the storage room rattled with two booming knocks. “Becks, let’s go! We’re on!” Nico called.
She straightened his jacket lapels. “Go. Have a good show.”
He was halfway out the door before he realized he’d forgotten something. Turning around, he caught Kat around the waist, hauling her close and kissing her. She melted against him, her hands winding in his hair as Nico shouted his name again from further down the hall. Beckett released her and stalked down the hall after his bandmates as the door closed behind him.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Kat and Derek stood in the wings as the members of Midnight Storm danced and sang their way through their greatest hits. Everything was going well, but Kat couldn’t shake the feeling of dread slithering down her spine. It wrapped its tendrils around each vertebrae and left cold, slimy coils of anxiety in the pit of her stomach.
The confetti blower fired without a hitch, the angle finally sending bits of slippery paper out into the crowd instead of blowing back on stage. The crew hit every cue, every scene change. The band moved like a well-oiled machine across the stage as thousands of fans screamed their adoration. Everything was going well.
But Kat knew something wasn’t right. She just couldn’t put her finger on what.
It wasn’t until the end of “Love Attack” that she caught it—a small moment, nothing terribly out of the ordinary, but different enough that it caught her eye. Like always, Jackson and Beckett jumped up onto the platform with the musicians, grabbing their guitars and playing the musical interlude they only ever played live. Like always, the interlude ended with a crash of the drums and Zach riffing downstage, his hand extended to the front rows of the audience. But just before the brothers jumped down from the platform, Jackson paused, swiping something from behind the bass drum. He took a deep drink from the water bottle he’d grabbed before tucking it behind the set piece on the edge of the platform, where he’d be able to grab it from the mainstage, shooting a nod and a smirk at the drummer.
Jackson was only half a beat late to his next mark. And it’s not like it was unheard of for the band members to stash water bottles on the set for when they needed a quick drink between songs. But behind the drum kit wasn’t one of the usual places. Neither was behind that specific set piece. And Jackson never drank Poland Springs. He was very particular about his water brands—everyone in the band was.
“They must be almost done,” Derek said beside her, leaning down to speak closer to her ear so he could be heard over the noise of the arena.
“Two more songs and the encore,” she said.
But while Derek seemed to be prepared to coast to the end of the show, Kat knew better. Something wasn’t right.
“Will you excuse me?” she shouted, gesturing to the back hall.
She didn’t wait for an answer, navigating around the maze of equipment backstage until she pushed out into the underground tunnels below the arena, already tugging her walkie talkie from her belt clip. “Gid, how’s it look?” she asked.
“Quiet. Everything alright?” came the staticky reply.
“I’m not sure. Can you get back here?”
“On it.”
It was risky to pull Gideon from the floor, but she couldn’t shake this feeling that they were only a moment away from disaster. Besides, the crowd had been exceptionally well behaved, and Gideon’s team was the best. She had no doubt they could handle anything that might flare up on the floor during the last three numbers.
Kat paced in the hall as she waited, her heels clacking loudly on the concrete despite the music playing from the mounted monitors on the wall. Two more songs plus the encore. They just had to get through two more songs and the encore.
